MORALITIES OF OWING AND LENDING: CREDIT, DEBT, AND URBAN LIVING IN KARIAKOO, DAR ES SALAAM By Benjamin Amani Brühwiler A DISSERTATION Submitted to Michigan State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of History-Doctor of Philosophy 2015 ABSTRACT MORALITIES OF OWING AND LENDING: CREDIT, DEBT, AND URBAN LIVING IN KARIAKOO, DAR ES SALAAM By Benjamin Amani Brühwiler The literature on Africans and credit and debt is marked by a double binary. Scholars have tended to separate “traditional” or “informal” credit and debt relations from “modern” or “formal” financial institutions and instruments. In addition, scholars have either focused on the role credit and debt relations played in the economic realm or they have examined the social and cultural significance of debt and credit. As a result, the prevailing picture of Africans and finance in twentieth-century urban Africa is one of inadequacy, lack, and exclusion: the inadequacy of traditional forms of credit in market economies, Africans’ lack of access to formal financial institutions, and their exclusion from the modern world of finance. This dissertation challenges this doubly binary conceptualization and locates the myriad views and uses of credit and debt in one conceptual frame. It shows that credit and debt relations were constitutive of various aspects of urban life, including multi-racial neighborhood sub-communities, respectable identities, urban membership and belonging, urban livelihoods and entrepreneurship, and urban planning and governance. The Kariakoo neighborhood in Dar es Salaam serves as the locus to examine how debt and credit shaped work and business, social and communal life, and people’s identities and subjectivities in urban Africa. If debt is an anthropological and historical constant, the relations of debt and credit also changed significantly over the twentieth century when economists and planners as well as urban traders and lenders debated and shaped these relations and the multiple – at times competing, at times intersecting – moralities undergirding them. This dissertation contributes to our understanding of the ways and meanings of borrowing, investing, and doing business in urban Africa. First of all, it challenges histories of credit and finance in colonial and postcolonial Africa, which have focused exclusively on formal financial institutions to which few had access. In fact, wholesale traders at the Kariakoo market relied on an informal and long-established credit system known as mali kauli to trade agricultural products while having little cash at disposal. Kariakoo residents also turned semi-formal pawnshop credit to their advantage and proved to be reliable borrowers. Second of all, it shows the significance of credit and debt well beyond the economic sphere of urban life. Credit and debt relations were central to cosmopolitan neighborhood communities Kariakoo residents formed across racial and class categories. The availability of shop credit and pawnshop credit was a constitutive element of the urban experience, urban living, and urban belonging. Third of all, I demonstrate how the morality at the center of discourses and practices of debt repeatedly acted as fulcrum for reforming urban subjects. Colonial and postcolonial governments undertook repeated efforts to make urban residents more business-minded by impelling them to work on their creditworthiness and become “good debtors.” However, multiple moralities continued to exist in Kariakoo, which allowed urban residents to critically evaluate new forms of credit and debt and the attending moral discourses. Finally, I illustrate that the racial antagonisms between urban residents, which have dominated the literature on credit from the colonial era to the present, have obscured the intimate and long-standing relations of credit and debt between people of African, Arab, and Asian descent in various aspects of urban life. Following commodity trails and describing the workings of urban sub-communities, I show how Kariakoo residents of all hues and colors not only worked and lived together but also shared cultural notions of respectability, generosity, and shame. Copyright by BENJAMIN AMANI BRÜHWILER 2015 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS It would have been impossible to write this dissertation without the help of a large number of people and institutions. At Michigan State University, my advisor Laura Fair, the dissertation committee members Walter Hawthorne, Ed Murphy, and Mara Leichtman as well as Brandt Peterson, David Wiley, Deo Ngonyani, and Peter Limb have generously provided their intellectual and psychological support. All of my fellow graduate students were important and helpful companions, and I would like to specifically mention Todd Ellick, Emily Riley, Mandy Lewis, Josh Grace, Caleb Owen, Matthew Park, April Greenwood, Jennifer Eaglin, Alex Galarza, Bre Grace, and Bala Saho. Outside of MSU, Jim Brennan, Lynn Thomas, Kelly Askew, and Derek Peterson have provided valuable and highly appreciated feedback on my work at some stage during the research and writing process. In Tanzania, my first word of gratitude goes to the hundreds of people who agreed to sit down with me and share their life stories. My research assistants, Riziki Mashalo in Dar es Salaam and Benedict John Mgubike in Ifakara accompanied me to many interviews and were incredibly good at locating potential interview partners. Kennedy Mkute and Hidaya Kassim Mpagama helped me transcribe some of the recorded interviews. The doors of the Department of History at the University of Dar es Salaam were open thanks to the hospitality of Oswald Masebo, who was always eager to discuss my research and listen to my requests. The presence of my fellow Tanzanianist historians Marcel Dreier, Lukas Meier, Emily Callaci, Julie Weiskopf, and Stephanie Lämmert enriched my research experience in Dar es Salaam. Finally, an ever- grateful asante to Mama Naha, who made my first stay in Dar es Salaam in 2006 so enjoyable that I had to go back to Tanzania. v Financial support for research and write-up came from various organizations. Money from the Fulbright Foreign Student Program allowed me to do pre-dissertation archival work in the United Kingdom and Germany in 2010. The MSU International Studies and Programs Pre- Dissertation Research Grant facilitated a pre-dissertation research trip to Dar es Salaam in 2011. Twelve months of research in Tanzania and six months of archival research in Europe from 2012 to 2014 were funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation through the generous Fellowship for Prospective Students and doc.mobility as well as by the MSU history department through the Milton E. Muelder Graduate Award. Finally, the Freiwillige Akademische Gesellschaft made money available for the write-up phase in Basel. At the University of Basel, I would like to thank Patrick Harries, Olivia Hochstrasser, Martin Lengwiler, and Veit Arlt for helping me arrange my stay at the history department as a lecturer and visiting scholar. A word of thanks also goes to the archivists at the various archives I visited in Tanzania, the United Kingdom, and Germany, who kindly supported my research by making available historical documents. Finally, I would like to thank my friends and family on three continents, who have accompanied me on this journey. To my wife Agnes and my son Ari, thank you for having started a new chapter in my life. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF TABLES ......................................................................................................................... ix LIST OF FIGURES ......................................................................................................................... x INTRODUCTION ........................................................................................................................... 1 CULTURAL APPROACHES TO ECONOMIC HISTORY .................................................... 5 DEBT, MORALITY, AND SUBJECTIVITY ........................................................................ 10 DEBT AND CREDIT IN (EAST) AFRICAN HISTORIOGRAPHY .................................... 18 METHODOLOGY .................................................................................................................. 30 CHAPTER OVERVIEW ........................................................................................................ 35 CHAPTER 1—URBAN BELONGING: MORAL NEIGHBORHOOD COMMUNITIES IN COLONIAL KARIAKOO ............................................................................................................ 42 COSMOPOLITAN KARIAKOO: THE VIEW FROM ABOVE ........................................... 44 CREDIT AND COLONIAL ECONOMIC RATIONALITY ................................................. 51 COSMOPOLITAN KARIAKOO: THE VIEW FROM THE GROUND ............................... 64 MORALITY, DEBT, AND BELONGING ............................................................................ 85 CONCLUSION ..................................................................................................................... 103 CHAPTER 2—BORROWING AND SAVING AGAINST ALL ODDS: PAWNSHOP CREDIT AND SAVINGS ACCOUNTS IN COLONIAL KARIAKOO ................................... 105 DEMONIZING BORROWING AND EULOGIZING SAVING ........................................ 107 PAWNING GOODS ............................................................................................................. 110 THE PLEDGED OBJECT ...................................................................................................